Highlights in Hebrews
(with Roger Kirby)
Part 12 - Hebrews 4:12-13
Under the knife.
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
It is hard for us to see any benefit in the work of a sword. The writer will not have known anything about a surgeon’s scalpel so he could not have used that picture for what he wanted to say. But that does not stop us doing so. A surgeon’s scalpel, that little thin knife, is probably the sharpest sort of blade that there is around these days so it would make a good illustration.
‘The word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any surgeon’s scalpel ….’few of us modern people will not at some time in our lives had to willingly submit ourselves to a surgeon carrying out an operation on us. He (or it may have been a she) may have had to sort out some part: a finger, an arm or a leg, that got broken. He will cut to make it better, to ensure that things naturally heal in the way that they should and not in some twisted way that will leave us permanently crippled. Or there may have been something wrong with one of the major organs in our body and he has had to go deeper in and try to sort things out. Yes, a surgeon’s scalpel is a better illustration of what the writer wants to say than a double-edged sword because its purpose is beneficial
The word of God that the writer was thinking about would almost certainly have been mainly the Old Testament. It may, or may not, (we don’t know when this book was written) have included any of the New Testament we know, but will almost certainly have included information about the life and words of Jesus. Our Bible has both Testaments, of course. Paying close attention to these Words of God will not always be a comfortable process. Sometimes, it will cut deep in order to straighten us out, make sure we do not get twisted in our thinking, keep us long term healthy when things were beginning to go wrong.
Make sure that you live a long and healthy life by paying close attention to the wonderful Word of God that we have in the scriptures. Sometimes they may cut deep to sort us out so that we continue along the good and narrow way. That will then ensure that we reach the ‘rest’ we were thinking about a few verses back, the Kingdom of God both in this life and the next. Another psalmist said, (Psalm 119:11) “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” The writer of Hebrews was thinking of what we should do; the Psalmist was more concerned with the outcome.
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